In the junk heaps I found lots of great pictures of children.

One vendor sold me all the pictures of kids that I could want, then threw in an extra. “Here, take her,” she said, “Poor thing, she’s so ugly, no one wants her.” The girl was goofy and homely in her plaid jacket, but she was smiling in such a way that I knew someone had loved her and told her she was just perfect.

I took her back to California with me, and kept her in a box on my desk, thinking I would find a place for her in some collage. In 2001 I made a monument of her, and now her broken smile presides over New York Harbor where the Twin Towers once stood.